Time playing Three Card Monty with the Deficit

Well it wasn’t that long ago a phalanx of newly elected went tramping off to Washington. In fact they haven’t even taken their seats yet, but in an era of you get the job once you are elected, the first item on the new Republicans agenda was to make sure those who got them elected were taken care of. Excuse me, that wasn’t you, unless of course my blog has found a new group of better off readers. No, the people that put the Republicans in office make substantially more than you do and they expect a return on their investment.

That goal to cut spending and to bring the government back under some kind of fiscal control was nothing more than election rhetoric. True, you heard it so many times that you really thought you were beginning to believe it was possible. Might I remind you of the weapons of mass destruction campaign? You thought they were there too!! Repeat it long and often enough and people actually begin to believe it. You can vote on that!

Yes, less taxes, more attention to jobs, and a serious effort to bring down that god-awful deficit. If what they have done so far is any indication of things to come, well, our grandchildren can just forget about infrastructure improvements in their lifetime.

Here is an analogy for you: Bush tax cuts are to good economical practice as arsenic is to good health! That being said however, those in the driver’s seat see no problem with the tax cuts for everyone and so they will remain in place for the next few years or so. Given the fact that they will expire, say around next election time, it is probably a pretty sure bet the tax cuts will be with us for a long time.

But what about all that talk of the deficit? Well turns out it was just that. Talk. To those who say these tax cuts are needed, one only has to look at the lost revenue they would have generated had they expired. That being close to three trillion dollars over the next ten years and since we won’t be getting that money, we are going to have to get it somewhere else. For those of you reading ahead, you guessed it.

Yes, we will have to borrow it. Ah yes, right back to the China first credit savings and loan. And when they say yes, and we say, talk to North Korea and tell them to be good, pretty please, don’t expect it to go well. And don’t get all excited the next time Russia decides to overstep its borders either. And when you get stuck on I-95 this summer in traffic and they blame a bridge being to small to handle the traffic, get over it. NO pun intended.

The last election saw the largest influx of private money ever into a campaign. Non-profits were set up with the sole purpose of funneling private money into the election. Money doesn’t elect people. Votes do. But let’s face it, you saw no ad, heard no campaign speech, and witnessed no change that money didn’t support.

In a fool’s game such as Three Card Monty, the mark is presented something he would like to have. In our case, they put some interesting things on the table. We had getting the deficit under wraps. Don’t ask, don’t tell. The economy and jobs. Taxes and tarps. And after we choose with our symbolic votes, it appears we got exactly what we deserved. Nothin!